Methodical Services of the Central Libraries of the Regions: Questions of Organizational and Staffing Maintenance

Abstract

The activity of methodical services is prerequisite for sustainable development of libraries and effective innovation. The article presents the results of the first survey over the last 30 years, conducted by the Center for study of problems of the development of libraries in the information society of the Russian state library in April — October 2017, aimed to analyse the organization of methodical services in the Central libraries of subjects of the Russian Federation, to assess their workforce capacity and to offer solutions to the revealed problems. The results of the data analysis (representativeness is 94%) demonstrates that in most of the Central libraries the methodical activity is the priority (core) trend, and methodical services continue to evolve. In their organization there is a great diversity, which manifests in setting the activity goals and objectives, in choosing the approaches to determining staffing levels, building a structure. The capacity of human resource in most of the libraries can be considered quite high: experts belong to the potentially productive age group, have sufficient experience, and regularly update their knowledge. Among the acute problems is lack of the approved methods for calculation of the normative standards for staffing levels of these units, as well as the requirements for professional growth training for methodologists. There is made the conclusion on the need to work out recommendations for the formation of staff size of methodological services, to identify and spread the best practices for the development of the government order for performance of works (services) on the methodological support of librarianship. For the organization of advanced professional training of methodologists, it is needed to combine the efforts of Federal libraries and actively introduce distance learning.